It’s Tuesday! My traditional day off from raiding and the day I’ve set aside to examine my search terms from the last week. Apologies for the lack of wowhead tooltips on most of this stuff; I just can’t reach the site at the moment. Here we go, Q&A number 21.
1) bloodsurge heroic gearscore
Listen here, pal. If you’re lucky enough to get Bloodsurge, Kel’Thuzad’s Blade of Agony and your first thought about it has to do with GEARSCORE, then there is no more hope for the people playing this game and you make me want to quit the game entirely. You jackass.
2) holy pally haste gemming
No.
Just… no.
Get to 676 haste, yes, but don’t do it via gems. Even if you drop down to 251 shoulders from some “awesome” 264 shoulders with no haste. Even if you use 232/245/258 pants because they have haste and your tier don’t. Just don’t gem for haste.
3) fol paladin armory
Excellent request, let’s go take a look at a top guild and a couple of their paladins.
Scrubbles, of Premonition (the top US guild), is clearly a spellpower paladin:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen’jin&cn=Scrubbles
Over 4,000 spellpower unbuffed, 677 haste, a fair amount of crit. This guy is doing it right.
What’s that? He’s not gemmed full spellpower?
No, he’s not. He needed some gems to get to 676+ haste and managed to use the Reckless gems to help him snag socket bonuses.
But Kurn, you just said not to gem for haste!!
I know, but this guy definitely knows what he’s doing. He already had a lot of haste and has only used a few hybrid spellpower/haste gems to get to the magic number. You’ll note he’s got a couple of other gems that match the socket bonuses (they’re mostly +spellpower) and he’ll use Royal Dreadstones (sp/mp5) and I see a Luminous Ametrine (sp/int) to make sure he’s not much over the haste minimum. This is someone who has looked at their gear and looked at what they feel they need more of while still prioritizing spellpower. He has spellpower on every gem and then adds in a couple of different stats based on what he feels he needs and he does that in such a way that he snags the spellpower from the socket bonuses. That’s what makes him smart — he’s not just dropping in a haste gem here or there. The fact that he’s at 677 haste indicates that some very careful thought into exactly how to gem.
Don’t follow his lead unless you’re building a very specific set of gear like Scrubbles has.
Zaroua, also from Premonition, has a different method to maximizing their FoL gear.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen’jin&cn=Zaroua
They’re, uh, in 4pc T9.
Which, frankly, is awesome if you’re healing people who have Sacred Shield on them. It LOOKS to me, and I could definitely be wrong, that Scrubbles is the main tank healer and that Zaroua is relied upon for tank healing the way a druid would be — with hots and quick, fast heals. 3600+ spellpower, not quite at the haste cap, even with 40 haste food, but an interesting playstyle.
I really did love the T9 4pc. It made me REALLY sad to swap out my chest and legs for better pieces.
4) aspect of the wild putricide heroic
Sure, go ahead, although it’s probably more beneficial for raid DPS for a shaman to drop a Nature Resistance totem. (See that, Rilgon? I thought about RAID DPS FIRST. ;D)
5) can i fish for the turtle mount while in a raid group
Yes, no issue here. You cannot do your fishing daily while in a raid group, though.
6) how do paladin buffs work
Wow. Been a long time since I’ve had to explain HOW pally buffs work.
Okay, you have up to four paladin buffs. Each lasts for 10 minutes (regular blessing) or 30 minutes (greater blessing).
Blessing of Sanctuary (only available with the proper talent in the protection tree): Only really useful for the prot pallies themselves, unless you’re lacking a discipline priest to proc Renewed Hope from shielding people.
Blessing of Kings (baseline, all paladins have this): 10% stat increase. What’s not to love?
Blessing of Wisdom (baseline, all paladins have this, holy paladins have up to 2 points to improve this): Gives you mana every five seconds.
Blessing of Might (baseline, all paladins have this, with the choice of up to 2 points to improve this): Gives you extra attack power.
You can cast any blessing on any person and not have it affect anyone else. But if you start casting Greater Blessings, they will buff everyone *of that class* in the raid. So say you’re the only paladin in the raid and your DK tank wants kings and your DK DPS wants might. You give out the greater blessing (probably kings) to death knights and then you give a simple blessing of might to the DPS, overwriting their kings from you.
You can only have one blessing up per person per paladin.
For a priority list, check out #5 in this previous Q&A.
7) hunter pets absorb putricide damage
Yes, they do absorb damage from Unstable Ooze Adhesive’s explosion. And they take a ton less due to their passive avoidance. They will naturally take 90% less damage from AOE spells, which is awesome for this particular fight.
8) lich king heroic 25 tactics shambling
My advice is to tranq shot these bastards so they don’t kill your Shambling Horror tank. :P
9) saurfang divine guardian kurn
I like seeing myself in search terms. It’s cute.
You would think that I would pop Divine Shield and Divine Sacrifice (triggering Divine Guardian) a lot on Saurfang, but the truth is that I don’t.
What I do is this:
– If a CASTER gets Boiling Blood pre-first mark, I BOP (hand of protection) them. This prevents Saurfang from gaining a bit of Blood Power and pushes back the first Mark of the Fallen Champion.
– If I get Boiling Blood pre-first mark, I DS/DS out of it, which has the happy result in lessening the damage others are taking as well, so that he gains even LESS Blood Power, pushing back the first Mark of the Fallen Champion even more.
– If I get Boiling Blood at all AFTER the first mark, I’ll probably take the GCDs to hit my macro. I will only do this if I’m only healing one mark and if Saurfang has just cast Mark of the Fallen Champion, which means the damage he’s putting out is relatively low. He hits harder, even with Mark of the Fallen Champion when he has more Blood Power, so when he casts a mark, he’s back to 0 Blood Power. This is the “safe time” (and I use that term very carefully) to use a global for something that isn’t spamming Holy Light.
10) turtle hunter dreamwalker beacon
You can do this, yes. If you beacon Dreamwalker and park a Tenacity pet with 2/2 Blood of the Rhino right next to Dreamwalker, you can spam heal the pet and the Glyph of Holy Light splashes will be bigger. However, this effectively removes the pet from combat and thus really sucks for a hunter. Tenacity pets are not good raiding pets, they’re not going to have the buffs a Ferocity pet is going to have, which means that hunter is going to hate you for suggesting that:
a) they don’t bring their wolf to the raid,
b) they just park the damn pet right there by the dragon
While it WILL output more healing, if you’re having issues where you need that much more healing, chances are you need your DPS to be at their best and hunters are NOT at their best without a wolf giving them Ferocious Howl and access to Call of the Wild.
I strongly recommend beaconing the dragon and healing *yourself* while you park yourself next to the dragon. She’s got a large hitbox so you can be pretty far out before Glyph of Holy Light splashes no longer reach her.
